Genome Training Module in The Subreality Cafe
by Typewriter King
Summary: An author's trip to the subreality to explain his new C2 at ff.net Typewriter and his original characters talk about what the Genome Projection is about.


"Satellite from days of old show me to your access code." -- _Ed (Cowboy Bebop)_

A pulsing light and particle show fluxes about. I'm new to astral projection, the means used to place oneself in the subreality café. Other patrons, all those great memorable legends of the popular pantheon, watch on with feigned disinterest, nursing every ale conjured by every popular scribe.

Most clutch firearms, others dip quivering fingers in antiquated satchels of alchemy ingredients. The rip conforms to my shape, sweat beads off my forehead, but I let it drip, as one foot crosses the threshold of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge.

The gifted spiritual fighters feel my benign intent first, and visibly relax, letting shoulders sag, posture ease, and stress hormones shut their taps.

The TOTR, Dragonlance, and Harry Potter mages depart. This isn't their scene.

I speak.

"Hal, have the Star Trek enthusiasts installed the holodeck?"

Arthur C Clarke's maniacal computer flashes its red eye.

"That's an affirmative, Dave. They've modified and updated regularly since the days before the World Wide Web."

My head nods.

"Then I assume you can teleport me there. Configure the holodeck into Aristotle's Gymnasium in Athens. I want a pleasant Mediterranean climate."

He makes it so. I see the entire agora. Everything seems as it should.

"Thanks, Hal. Now I need my crew beamed in. Original characters Constantine Alexander Pushkin from _GW Thanksgiving_, Thurman Dynamics from _Blood_, and Paul Evens and Robin Molina from _Gordian Knot_."

Dense particle vapors coalesce into mortal human beings. Pushkin, the Russian, has his Model 650 RAMO anti-material long rifle crooked in his arms, Dynamics, the Detroit native, has another long rifle, and Evens and Molina carbines. They're all in urban blue-and-gray battle dress.

"Hola!"

I exchange pleasantries with the quartet.

"Okay, time to segue into business. I'm the text-based avatar for Typewriter King, and I'm here interacting with a rich world of characters for a good reason. This is a promotional piece for the Genome Projection, the little C2 I started. If you need a physical reference, my muscles around the shoulders and chest are well pronounced, and I stand at around six feet. My body mass index (BMI) is at the higher end of acceptable. I have no distinguishing features, but personal information isn't important here, anyway. Can you see me? Good. Now we're introduced.

What can I say about the Genome Projection that isn't said in the allowable 500 words? Plenty, I'm sure. First off, miscellaneous works from even the most obscure sources will be accepted if the fan writer goes through the motions of explaining characters and plots within that realm.

Say you write in Dale Brown's fanon. You may take it for granted that all your readers will know what an EB-52 Megafortress is, but everyone else might require that you add an explanatory paragraph to bring them up to speed. CAP?"

Constantine dashes to the camera lens, and presents himself within view. The point-of-view is straight ahead.

"Thank you, Sir. We have some footage, far better than a power point projection, to illustrate. This tale is a story all in itself, but also serves a valuable function in _Thanksgiving_. I know, the Gundam story was a flop, but one can learn lessons from this. Oh, and don't fret, as the Mock Turtle says, these grow shorter every time. That's why they are called _lessons_."

(The disclaimer reels first, white text on a dark background: Dramatist note: As I'm sure you know, I don't own the Gundam Universe or any of the Gundam trademarks. This is a nonprofit venture written for the pleasure of Gundam Wing fans that probably own most of the official Gundam Merchandise, but still want more out of the Earth Sphere. I SHARE this text in the hope that it is in compliance with all the regulations placed on fan fiction. Note: I know the song is titled 'Mister Sandman.' The corruption is intentional.)

And now, the first person narrative begins.

My name is not Stalingrad, but I never mind the soubriquet. I actually consider it a badge of honor. I'm of course a fanatical student of all great Russian shooters, from Vasili Zaitsev on down. I was actually born in Volograd, and became a hunter as a youth.

It fills my heart with nostalgia to hear that the navy base in Madagascar was hit with the venerable Katyusha rockets, even though those have little resemblance to those used in The Great Patriotic War. Most early Kates had warheads of only a few kilograms, and ranges of around five and a half kilometers, while these new beasts actually carry fuel-air monsters, and travel distances equaling regular artillery. But hey, they're still Russian-made.

Like Zaitsev, they are products of the Urals. In case you're wondering, the Urals are formidable mountains that effectively separate Asia from Europe. For Americans, it's convenient to think of it militarily like your own Rockies. You have the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, NORAD, all that, and you stock our key manufacturing plants up there. Culturally, think of it more like your Appalachians, I guess.

Anyway, that's enough background for now, why don't I continue my narrative?

I was young when my unusual skill started to standout even to my closest peers. I worked with our somewhat heavy-handed animal control specialists, meaning I got to take out my old SVD Dragonov rifle, and manually regulate the predator population. I was a regular machinist, of course, and tightened up the tolerances of the old gun, so I could shoot even straighter. The navy uses this great waterproof green packaging tape, and I just loved weaving everything together with it. I found a large chunk of carbon fiber from a dumpster, and replaced the vibrating wooden stock. I even resorted to running glue through the inner workings of my rifle. Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Well don't worry, the gun was designed to accommodate the presence of expanding fluids within. I spread epoxy on the butt, to better cut down on recoil, and invested in a 10x Leopold site.

I've come to grudgingly accept that Germans know how to craft optics.

I mentioned being noticed, right?

Right, I always took the effort to maneuver upwind of the animals I planned to shoot, and I never took the orange vest with me, as so many others do. One must accept the hazard of friendly fire sometimes, right?

Anyway, my bosses recognized how superior I was to my colleagues, who never put in the work on their guns, and made inferior shots, even with newer guns, and 'gee wiz' gadgetry, so they showed me off to the wonderful task of watching over our national Trans-Siberian pipeline.

It seems, the Arab Unification Conflict hadn't yet cooled down, and the company held a shooting competition to see who could best protect the line running out of Uzbekistan.

I was a preteen, but I worked fulltime by that time, though I attended a few classes anyway, but that's not important.

I still used my Dragonov, a weapon fully capable of using NATO 30 caliber shells, which I did sporadically. Now this _is_ an important fact, because most other shooters relied on the, well, better .308 Winchester round, and some even packed .50s.

When Mr. Reberba, the pipeline's financer, noticed this, he had to ask how such a small child could kill a big bear with such a small shell.

"I do it the way Vasili Zaitsev and all the other _real_ heroes do it."

"How's that, young man?"

"Between the eyes, where the CPU lives."

I think it scared him. It certainly distressed Lady Catalonia, his companion.

"Bears have big squishy brains," I grinned, and pantomimed, making one great big 'O' with my hands.

He lined us up on a craggy ridge under the midday sun on the edge of the Aral Seabed for some marksmanship demonstrations on a defunct Russian BTR, or more specifically, the red and white target painted on one flank.

Stupid, really, because we all passed without any trouble. Even after firing a box of cartridges each, most of us stayed in the group.

Mr. Reberba wore a russet vest over the cliché pallid shirt. He also wore his trademark mustached smile.

"Well done! I knew I could count on Russia's best shooters to make that shot!"

I'm not big on aesthetics, but when someone feels the need to punctuate everything he says with an exclamation, I take an instant dislike of him. Still, I wanted the job.

"Let's see how you handle this!"

Do you see what I'm saying?

From a tent, I heard a young girl play a cello. She played a Metallica song, _Sandman_. I wondered if she appreciated the irony of playing a song by that title in the presence of desert Arabs?

I settled outside her tent, waiting for my turn to fire. The sun began to settle lower in the sky, and I noticed more shooters sulk away in disgust. It gets old, and eventually, I elected to shut my eyes for a time.

"Hello, are you one of the Slavic gunners here?"

I opened my eyes, and found the cello player.

"Hi. I'm Russian, to be exact. I'm trying to find work with the oil company out here. How are you?"

She seemed thoughtful.

"I'm well, but I'd much rather be in space. Most of my sisters are in space, but I most want to see my favorite sister, Iria."

My smile matched hers.

"I only have one sister, Ludmilla, so it's not tricky to name a favorite."

She laughed dryly, the opposite of Mr. Reberba's belly laugh.

"So, you like metal bands? I couldn't help but notice you playing _Sandman_."

My keen observation gleaned the more genuine expression of surprise.

"I especially like how they translate onto the cello. Are you a music fan?"

My nod was subtle.

"They sure beat the radio pundits jabbering. I listen to short wave regularly. I built my own crystal set, which doesn't need juice."

"Juice?"

"Battery power."

She frowned.

"Are you saying you can build a radio that doesn't run on electricity?"

Now I'm showing surprise.

"Sure, it's a standard project for novice hobbyists. It only took a few hours, after assembling all the parts."

She's still puzzled.

"But crystals are expensive, are they not?"

I shook my head in a negative.

"Heck no! They're worthless. I use common quartz in our radios, something you just find lying on the ground. The other parts are also quite common."

She thought that over, skeptical.

"I'll take your word for it."

"Hey, you can find quartz on the moon, I'm serious!"

She diverted from the subject.

"Is that your gun?"

Argh!

"Sure is. Dragonov's famous SVD sniper rifle. It gained notoriety fighting America's involvement in Vietnam, and earned the respect of the fellows over there," I pointed toward Afghanistan, "when my countrymen served over there a long time ago."

She stared with me.

"Do you know the personal history of the gun in your hand?"

"Sure do. Newer guns were already being issued when my Grandfather bought it from a friend. He was a cop, he was, within a big city militia, and when he needed a marksman weapon to pass tests for the sniper certificate, this is what he used."

"That's how it entered your family?"

"It was."

Her eyes measured across it.

"My family has no heirlooms like that. We believe war is a horrible thing, and family members are forbidden from carrying arms; although we don't mind hiring people to do so in our place."

"I sense you think that's a hypocrisy," I ventured.

"You could say so, but please understand this is necessary, if we're to mediate conflicts in good faith."

"I see, so you're negotiators."

She sat under the shade.

"Many of us diverge into different fields, but none of us are allowed to compromise our reputation as unbiased arbitrators. My family has worked too hard to end the conflicts in the Earth Sphere, but all that could shatter if even one faction believes we favor a side."

"Sounds like your family is a minefield of stressors, but mine isn't. I think you'd like them- not that you dislike your own!"

She laughed at my slip.

"Guns as heirlooms, powerless radios, and plentiful crystals. Yeah, I'd say it would be very interesting to live in your shoes. You have a sister named Ludmilla. Any brothers?"

"Again, just one. Demitri. He's older than me. A cobbler, which means he makes boots for the country folks, somewhere out in the sticks where factory boots aren't sold. He's doing well, since winning a contract to repair used boots for the Siberian Military."

"Siberian Military. There's a sore spot in my family, trying to negotiate the Manchurian Forces out of there has been Hell-and-a-half, or however that vulgar expression goes. Whatever happened to China, I have no idea."

"It can't be that bad," I reasoned, "if the Chinese really had a foothold anywhere near the pipeline, believe me, my employers wouldn't have me shooting wolves."

"That's true. Are you really that good?"

A voice summoned me.

"Okay, Mister Stalingrad. Let's see if your Zaitsev talk actually amounts to a crock of crap!"

How crude. I really don't like Mr. Reberba.

"I have my skeptics, but I _did_make it here, after all."

I said a hasty goodbye, and pursued the vested fellow.

"Hold on, my name's Khadijah!" She pursued me, grasped my hand, and palmed a card into it.

"Gee, I don't have a card, I'm too simple. I know how to read, though."

We both considered that funny, I don't know why.

"Come on, you Slavic idiot!"

Mister Reberba again, a real pain.

"I guess I can contact you later," said I, pocketing the printed business card.

Not long later, my tormenter had me on the crest of the dried lake.

"Take a good look, you miserable Russian. Your kind dried this up, so the least you can do is keep my oil pipes from drying prematurely."

He pointed at the bull's-eyed BTR.

"That ugly son-of-a-butcher's going to drive through an obstacle course, and all you got to do is hit the twinkling golden halo inside the bull's-eye."

The wind felt warm to me, but they induced the oilman to button up. It cut across the lakebed like a dust storm precursor. I imagined a wild-west director filming from a crane point of view, with no sound playing save the desert wind.

I don't know what this place looked like when the Soviets messed it up, but when I took my shot, the dust had an orange appearance, like it was rich in metals.

"There it goes, boy."

The BTR puffed a cloud of blue smoke, and jerked forward. True to Reberba's word, a jumping halo, smaller than the bull's-eye's inner ring, illuminated on the flank I aimed for.

I quickly recognized the jerking wasn't so random, that it moved like a man bobbing and darting in a crouched run. I got the hang of it quickly, and put a shot through the inner ring, and repeated the feat as the Russian infantry carrier made several laps.

"That's enough, Stalingrad. I can tell you right now you made the team."

Don't misunderstand me; I figured I was the best when I got there, but my surprise was that this trial put me above everyone else.

"Really?"

I couldn't understand how the others could fail so easily.

"You made the top four, the cut for this security job," he shook his head, "it appears all your buddies relied too much on rangefinders and lasers and stuff, and when we baffled all that, their capacitors and junk overloaded. Your oldfangled crap kept you in the game, kid."

I always prided myself on fiddling the old gun up to modern competition specs. I pride myself on straitening it out so I could hit a one inch target 800 meters out one hundred times out of as many shots. That's what modern sniping requires at the top levels. To do better, you need an energy weapon, or a wormhole.

I hear the Preventers have a few such energy small-arms weapons stocked away, but I haven't touched them.

Anyway, that's enough narrating on my early work. I know you'd like to hear more, like what my real name is, so I promise you I'll give you that when I get back.

That's right, I'm leaving, so I can pursue the true primary objective of the sniper, ground level recon. Relay your acquired knowledge to the others in the outfit, and make sure they know more than merely how to shoot. Make sure Brankovic knows I'm off performing a real combat duty; I'd hate to come back here and face brig time for an AWOL conviction in absentia.

-"Stalingrad"

Footage ends.

"Yes, I know that could have been cut down considerably, but who can be sated by only a sound bite of my glory?"

The audience applauded only their skin changed color, then voiced words of encouragement.

CAP accepted the curtain call, bowed, and blew kisses at the audience.

I, Typewriter King, took the metaphorical stage.

"Thank you for showing us such a wonderful presentation at my gymnasium, Mr. Pushkin. You are truly one of the most intriguing characters I've penned this year. Now, does everyone see how that narrative informed the readers about a situation they otherwise wouldn't have known about? I consider this a highly entertaining medium for informing the reader about the fictional world." I scope about the audience.

"General Dynamics, would you like to share anything?"

He seemed somewhat embarrassed about being called to speak before the class, but after straightening out his battle dress, walked where everyone imagined the podium to be.

"Thank you, Typewriter King. Yes, I'd like to stress the importance of keeping facts straight when it comes to geography. You guys can sneak by a cultural snafu because your characters are likely to be rogues, outcasts, or within westernized militaries, but readers won't tolerate careless geography. I advise all you young writers to know where the mountains, streams, valleys, arroyos, canyons, whatever else are. This applies to submarine stories, too. If you have a submarine diving to three hundred meters in the Bering Strait, you'll look like an idiot, because you've just burrowed one hundred and fifty meters into the ocean floor in reality. I'd strip you of command, if I were a navy man. Thank you, all." He walked off the podium, perplexing me.

"General, do you not have clip to show?"

He shook his head.

"You never make those mistakes, even in Washington Irving-inspired stories."

"Well, could you at least say more about say, settings?"

He theatrically shrugged.

"Hey, why not? Okay, these days, it isn't so hard to find all the topographical information needed to right something intelligent. Computerized roadmaps detail where the traffic can go, the US Geological Survey reveals so much about the Earth, and most of America's towns, even the smallest ones, offer information online. Of course, none of this is a substitute for walking the grounds of a place, but not every location will be described in detail. Do your homework with Encarta, Streets and Trips, cities online, and institutions online. Usually, that research will glean enough to satisfy a town resident."

Two criteria down: (1) Genome Projection stories will be in various fanon, so every story will have the burden of explaining that fanon to outsiders. Best to artfully weave that in, as seen in the example. (2) Since these stories will emphasize GEOPOL struggles, well fleshed-out geography is a must.

Cross-pollinating stories (crossovers) are fully welcomed. Genome's first fiction, _Gordian_, is in fact a cross pollination of several different Clancy book series. (Ben Goodly is mentioned, Net Force is a reality, and so are Power Plays.)

Let's move on.

I mention this is a nesting place for speculative fiction. What does that mean? I present another example. Role that Cowboy Bebop quote again.

(Lights Fade)

"Satellite from days of old show me to your access code." -- _Ed (Cowboy Bebop)_

Vladimir Plekhanov sits at a console somewhere in the Caucus, and decides he isn't too fond of OBL's sort of "help" in the struggle for Chechnya.

The date is October of 2003, and the Opera House attack changed Plekhanov's mind about the Mujihadin struggle.

At his keyboard, the Russian rectifies a mistake he'd made in cooperating with the Arab.

Iridium's 24 commercial communication satellites are in extreme low orbit, ready for a final plunge into the Pacific Ocean.

Plekhanov simply captures the source code and makes a simple change in a western debugger.

I'll try not to loose you in code, so I'll write it out in English and mathematical symbols in quotation:

"If (equal) then go to access accepted"

One only has to change the equal sign to unequal.

"If (unequal) then go to access accepted"

There's your Boolean logic for you. Broken down to assembly, you get one number for true, and one number for false. Simply change one number in the right space, and things are turned upside down without a single flag being thrown up.

This is textbook, but sometimes when programmers are pressed by a deadline, or they just quit early to watch DBZ, they'll resort to shortcutting security. (I've seen the empirical data, and the number of successful hacks shot up when DBZ episodes were first aired in the United States.)

When somebody successfully breaks in, just blame it on the mythical super hacker, then repair the problem. (Meaning, upload saved copies of whatever pages were defiled, and read some manga, the myth will protect you, as long as the baby boomer bosses don't catch on.)

I digress. I was talking about the Russian hacker with Chechen sympathies turning on Bin Laden. Okay, we've covered 101 hacking, now time for 101 physics.

If you've taken high school level physics, you probably know that mass multiplied by acceleration will equal force. Okay, so let's say each satellite weighs a hundred metric tons. What happens when one hits the Earth at nearly 9.8 meters per second? I'll spare you from the mental gymnastics. You nearly get a metric megaton from every satellite.

(Film Ends)

I made a play on the Genome project for a reason, to introduce scientific thought. Role one more film.

(The silver screen displays images again)

They carried the heaviest and most complex bomb known to man, a bomb of horrifying power. Does anyone outside of the scientific community know just what ten terawatts is? That's ten to the thirteenth power watts, sickening amount of electricity, enough to heat a packet of deuterium (heavy water) to a really big number in scientific notation, a temperature seen in nature only around quasars (which are probably masses of space dust and gas being pulled into a black hole). All you need to burn water to these temperatures is a collage tabletop laser to concentrate all its output into the briefest moment, say a femtosecond (a time so short, nerve impulses are turtles in comparison), and got a whole lot of steam power lunging against the bomb casing. They worked on this, too. They electroplated a super-dense material, metallic hydrogen, around a thicker casing of gundanium, thus trapping the steam long enough to buildup an explosive pressure. It rebelled against its casing as Cruz closed the Bombay, and Fox climbed a ballistic arc away. When the explosion occurred, dirt all the way to the mantle turned to glass, tsunamis surged toward Japan, gundanium vapor shot toward the moon, and X radiation flashed high enough to leave strange photoelectric effects, similar to those on the shroud of Turin, on the colony walls. All this, but because the engineers had worked so hard bulking the bombcase's sides, the blast radius didn't expand over the city.

(Clip Ends)

I realize most you don't know what Gundanium is, and for good reason. It's indigenous to gundam lore. Here's what GundamOfficial has to say about it:

(Power Point slide)

**Gundanium alloy**  
A unique compound which sic can only be produced in the zero-gravity conditions of space. In addition to its incredible strength, Gundanium alloy is electrically nonconductive and cannot be detected by radar. However, this material is expensive and difficult to manufacture, making it unfeasible for mass production.

Source: 

(Slide fades to black)

Alright, I think that will be all. Just to let everyone know, I Emailed Cheah about permission to repost his guide in Genome, and his plate will be full for a while, so he won't have a chance to perform the edits he wants soon. I'm patient.

What are you still doing here? That was a PS! I'm heading out of the Subreality Café now, and the rest of you should do the same.


End file.
